LIFESTYLES are not always innocuous. Who would have thought that cigarette smoking, once merely a fashion statement, would become the health hazard that it is today? The tobacco industry, however, remains a money-spinner. In many developing countries, it is the cash crop through which the economies of farming households could be improved. In Malaysia, Kelantan farmers were encouraged to turn land use to tobacco cultivation. Of course, that policy has been abandoned because other avenues of household income generation, more lucrative and less arduous, have taken over.
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